If Yans is reading this, he is probably thinking "holly crap, no more selling incomplete thrown together cars, the next one might linch me"

Here's more on Yons "only needs the starter installed"-mobile:

I just drained the 4-speed and about one ounce came out. Good thing the axle boot had a leak or it would have been a while before I checked that one!

I also checked the other tie-rod nut and there was no cotter pin there, either. I really need to check the front joint well before taking her up to speed. One of the warnings (I think it was in The Ogre' Cave) says that even though those joints look good, they can be rusted through under the rubber. If they break on the road, you could be in some serious trouble!

I remove the rear axle tonight and the new one arrives at Advance Auto tomorrow where I'll get the alxe seals, too. I'll also get the new tie rod bushings and the A-arm bushing if I can. They look pretty bad. I plan to keep it rubber since I hate squeeks and it sounds like poly makes some noise. Hmm - I wonder if I should use poly under that V8? The cradle is the only thing with poly on it right now. I guess I should throw on the solid trans mounts while I am under there, huh?

I still can't believe that I went through all that when the friggin' e-fan was spinning backwards! JEEZ!!

I may have her on the road tomorrow, but I really want to check the front suspension before any long trips. Could be scary!!

More progress tonight. It too Advance Auto 2 days to get the axle, so car-time last night didn't happen.

I picked up the new axle today and compared the lengths to be sure. The new one was about 3 inches shorter than the old one. I asked the sales dude about it and he just stretched the new one out. When I checked the old one, it was stretched the same distance, so I assume it is OK.

Of course, they didn't have any axle seals (also called output shaft seal for the Pep Boy techs that could not find one for the Fiero). I found the seals today, too, so I was ready to put the rear end back together.

Well, I got under the car and had a real clear shot of the rear-most trans mount and thought it was a good time to put in those solid mounts I bought from $Rich$ a year ago, so I started. Luckily, I have a good reach because the ass-end of the car was up on 3-ton stands. If I was only 6'3" tall or so, I would not have been able to reach the firewall-side bolts from above.

I loosened all the bolts up and jacked the trans up a bit (with a piece of wood between it and the jack) and the firewall-side came out once I disconnected the brace from the trans. On the trunk side, it was a good bit harder to take out the old rubber mount.

The firewall-side mount gave me a lot of trouble. $Rich$ set it up so that there was a nut and bolt on the top of the mount to connect to the brace, which was a big problem. I could not get a wrench on the back side because the remote mounted oil filter was right there, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway. With the mount in its holes and the brace in its 3 holes, there was not way to get a bolt in there. The holes were off by almost an half inch. I messed with moving the trans up and down, but no luck.

I remember that I had a poly mount stashed away and tried that one. It had the same alignment problem, but it had a threaded bolt hole, so I could at least get the bolt in there and slowly tighten up everything so it fell into place. I imagine a little stress on these mounts is normal. They can't all fit perfect.

I finally got the other solid mount in on the trunk side and pulled the jack and as it settled, some of the bolts snapped into place - or at least I hope that is what the sound was! I tightened everything up and it seems ok.

So, perhaps I have the only V8 Fiero with a solid engine and trunk-side trans mount with a poly firewall-side mount? I'll see if another solid mount comes along, but I think I will be OK for a while with this setup - although I wish I didn't have to.

Tomorrow is "Turkey-day" so the axle will go back in on Friday. I'm looking for poly parts for the rear suspension, so if you know of some, give me the heads up. I will keep the rubber parts back there until I get the poly. If nobody has some for sale, I'll go to the Fiero Store or Rodney Dickmans next week.

I know, I know. Blah, blah, blah - keep on talking. Photos would help, but I can't take the time to shoot them and load them later because I want to be able to drive this car to work so bad. The 40-45 minute drive in is killing me and a fast Fiero would be my salvation!

More to come on Friday and Saturday. I better be taking another test drive on Saturday or my weekend is shot! Enjoy the holiday!!

Finally! She is all back together. I had some trouble figuring out how to get the rear caliper back in and rotated correctly, so thanks to Ogre and all his good info in the Cave.

Note to self, after removing a rear caliper, do not pull on the e-brake lever. Once the piston goes out, you have to do some work to get it back in! Some may pull it to see if it still works, but I will not after all the fun I had tonight.

I didn't get it back together until 9pm and was about to go out and make the neighbors mad with a short drive, but then I remembered that there was no oil in the trans case - Dohh! So, she drank a little less than three quarts and she was ready to go, but I do like my neighbors, so I will save the ride for noon tomorrow after my patient wife gets back from work. She was understanding (I won't say "very understanding" because she was not the happiest to see me in and out of the garage all evening ).

More to come tomorrow when the test drive includes returning to the auto parts store to pick up the crawler I left at the counter today and to return the axle-socket set I borrowed from them today since they were out of the 30mm.

I got her out on the open road (if you can call it that around DC) and she was fine for a long time since my trips were around 15 minutes each. After the third trip (all within the hour), the temp started to creep up around 230 degrees so I had to bring her back in the garage. Damn!

While running, I listened close to the electric water pump and I could hear the sound of coolant bubbling through, so I am worried about air in the system. I don't thin I should be hearing that. I let her cool down and was only able to add about 2 ounces of coolant - even after jacking up the rear end.

What next?!?! I don't know what else to do. I plan to jack up the front tonight and see if there is air up there. Who knows...

If you hear bubling in the system, then you probably still have air in the system. I had a hard time burping my SC3800 after replacing the water pump. What I did to get a good burp on it was jack the rear end up pretty high, placed four jackstands under it, and cranked it. I let it idle until the temp got to about 200 with the t-stat out. I let it cool, then topped it off, and repeated until I could not get anymore in it.

That did the trick for me.

Thanks, Topcat. Since I do not have the regular Fiero t-stat setup, I cannot remove/replace the t-stat without draining the system. The t-stat is right on top of the intake with an aluminum block on top of it to act as a filler neck and flow through to the radiator.

I did drill the holes in the t-stat, so the air can escape.

I wonder if I need some of that stuff that keep the coolant from getting foamy?

In case I have not posted it yet, I started an "Overheats after 10 minutes" thread at https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum2/HTML/078365.html a while back.

Then I changed some things and it started heating up after 20 minutes - https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum2/HTML/078605.html

Now after a few more changes, I can drive it even longer (an hour today), but it still gets too hot. So - I am working that issue.

Now, I hear a wavering humm coming from the transmission. It stops when I take it out of gear - and the speed of the wavering noise gets faster with wheel speed - not engine speed. More on that at https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum2/HTML/078835.html . I have two extra trans, so that is not a big issue, but it could be a time-consuming one.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not quitting on this car, but if I get some money for it, I'll take it. I know it will be fixed but I would rather spend time on the Fino. Yons told me this car was ready for the road once the starter was hooked up, but it has taken too much time away from my main project car - the Finiero! I've done a lot to it so far, but it may be time to cut my time-losses and get back to the main mobile during the winter

Anyway, back to the garage to find out what the heating-up problem is. I'm putting in coolant stop-leak since Fierofetish suggest it in case of a tiny head-gasket leak. It can't hurt (from what I've been told). I may be able to drive it to work tomorrow since the heating problem can be stopped by just pulling over and waiting for it to cool down. I may have to be patient, though.

The 60-minute ride was sure fun today. I had 4 people stop me to ask questions about the car. It sure does sound nice.

[This message has been edited by Saxman (edited 01-05-2007).]

Saxman,

A couple random thoughts for you on the overheating subject.....

Flow is King. Both air flow and water flow. Have you tried pulling the thermostat completely to see how long you can go without overheating? Yes, it will take longer to heat up but that doesn't sound like it's going to be much of a problem in your case . If this "solves" your problem, there are high flow thermostats available that have a larger flow area. You may have heard in the past that you can have too much flow, but that's old school radiator experience talking from the early hot rod era. It used to be that too much flow would cause a overpressure situation at the radiator cap that would push coolant out the radiator overflow. This wasn't from heat, but rather was simply due to pressure on the "high pressure" side of the radiator (where the caps used to be). With the new cross flow radiator designs, the cap is on the low pressure side of the radiator and this really doesn't happen any more.

Some might tell you that you need a bigger radiator, but you have to be carefull on that too. Believe it or not, too big a radiator (one with larger flow passages) might flow water too easily and keep you from achieving turbulent flow in the radiator tubes. This type of condition results in a lower heat transfer coefficient and reduces the effiency of the radiator.

You mentioned "water from the exhaust" after cool down. If you are talking about some water after the car not being run for a day or more, then it might simply be that you are getting condensation forming in the exhaust pipes because you have a low spot. If it occurs after just a few hours, then it is very possible that you do indeed have a head gasket problem and that the pressurized water is being pushed into the cylinders. Maybe the stop leak will help - maybe not.

Back to flow.... something else I have been informed of is that aluminum heads and intakes are more restrictive to flow and therefore can be more sensitive to overheating due to flow issues. This is because the passages in the heads are machined to be smaller due to the metal not being as strong as the cast heads. If this is your case, then the increased flow from pulling the thermostat just might give you the extra umph to keep the system cool.

Finally (as my rant ends)... remember that the older V8's were orignally designed to run with very short lengths of radiator piping. Our cars have probably 3x - 5x the length of coolant hoses as compared to the vehicles they came out of. The pipes may be a bit smaller too (especially the hard pipes running under the body from back to frount). This causes more pressure drop. Since the water pumps are not positive displacement pumps, any increase in pressure drop is going to reduce the flow.

The best way to diagose the problem is to measure the "delta T" across the radiator (i.e. the temperature drop... temperature in versus temperature out). If the temperature drop is good, then the radiator is functioning properly and you simply don't have the flow you need through the engine block (or have an air pocket in the motor) assuming that the motor is mechanically in good condition. If the temperature drop across the radiator is not good, then you have to look at the radiator itself and determine why it will not cool (plugged, too big, too small, poor air flow, etc).

Sounds like you have made significant progress thus far. Hope some of this helps (and makes some sort of sense).

Thanks!

I'll keep this in mind as I try to figure this out. First I have to get the right cap

This radiator is huge. It hangs down as far as the old lower air dam did before. Perhaps I should go for one of the double electric fans to cover more of the radiator, too. I just have one fan - right in the middle.

Gotta get to bed. It's been a long Fiero day...

Car looks good. I really am going to put a Lambo Diablo kit on car so poor condition is okay.
Thanks

What do you want for the fixer upper?
Lets talk about both.
614-596-8249

Sorry to take so long. The thermostat comes out soon

I'd rather spend the winter finishing the Fino. This one is taking up too much time and too much garage space. I thought I bought a car that only needed the starter installed and I have done much more to fix this car than planned.

I'll report back when the t-stat is out.

[This message has been edited by Saxman (edited 01-05-2007).]

I'm still trying. I should have some more time to get this thing to a garage for a hydrocarbon test over the holidays.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Well, Happy New Year!

I hope to nail down this heating issue this weekend. I have the clear radiator hose to "see" if there is air mixing in the system. I'm also going to disconnect the heater hoses and bypass them at the engine for now, just in case the air in them is any reason for the warm temps.

quote Originally posted by Saxman: I just uploaded a video of the engine running at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CnPFK8-dms It may take a few minutes to show up because of the processing time at youtube. It was recorded on a pda phone, so the quality could be better. I'll get a better recording with my DAT recorder some time soon.

sounds good

sounds good, solve the heating problem?

Well, I just made a deal on a Mach 1 Mustang, so this one will go up for sale. I can't keep two V8 Fieros any longer. It's time to get to work on the poor neglected Fino!

If anyone wants to make an offer, feel free. It has to go. I'm in no big hurry, but I just can't keep it.

I will also be selling the 87GT with a fresh engine and rebuilt (no miles) Getrag. All the parts are in there and it starts, but the person I bought it from couldn't finish it because of a bike accident, and I have only had it parked since I bought it.

That leaves the Fino and an 87 T-top - and the plan is to put the Fino parts onto the 87 T-top.

I will still put the clear radiator hose on the Purple-Pain to see what is going on when I get the time (and if it doesn't sell soon), so the cash I am willing to accept will change if the heating problem is solved.

The Mach 1 is for work - and the Fino is for fun!!

What are you trying to get out of em? I kinda skipped over to the last page but which is which? send me some pics and I'll see what I can get you

I like em... very nice

Cptn_howdy1@yahoo.com

thanks

I wonder how the old V8 is doing?